RE: My sympathies for pantheism
March 30, 2014 at 1:03 am
(This post was last modified: March 30, 2014 at 1:12 am by Mudhammam.)
I finished reading The Conscious Mind today. Overall, it was a good read. I don't think he made a good case for dualism but I also don't think we should be so dismissive of alternative theories, regardless if they fail or succeed. I can appreciate someone who tries to tackle the difficult questions in a thorough and intellectually stimulating manner, even if the attempt is misguided. Face it, the nature of conscious experience and quantum mechanics involve some of the greatest mysteries that even the most brilliant scientists and philosophers hardly seem to be in agreement on. And even failed theories can offer some illuminating insights.
Alex, regarding some of my earlier speculations, the ideas I suggested came to me by way of my favorite psychonaut Robert Anton Wilson in the philosophical-pseudoscientific work Quantum Psychology. He goes through a list of various philosophies and captures the notions I was trying to express as follows:
"Ethnomethodology, largely the creation of Dr. Charles Garfinkle, combines the most radical theories of modern anthropology and phenomenological sociology. Recognizing social realities (plural), which it calls emic realities, enthnomethodology shows how every human perception, including the perceptions of social scientists who think they can study society "objectively," always contains the limits, the defects and unconscious prejudices of the emic reality (or social game) of the observer.
"Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists sometimes acknowledge an etic reality which is like unto the old-fashioned "objective reality" of traditional (pre-existentalist) philosophy and the ancient superstitions which have by now become "common sense". However, they point out that we cannot say anything meaningful about etic reality, because anything we can say has the structure of our emic reality---our social game rules (especially our language game)---built into it.
"If you wish to deny this, please send me a complete description of etic reality, without using words, mathematics, music or other forms of human symbolism. (Send it express. I have wanted to see it for decades)."
At the conclusion of the Chalmers' book, he briefly delves into a few of the different popular theories of quantum mechanics and summarizes them as follows. I'd like your opinion if this is still the situation we find ourselves in today or if any significant advances have been made since the mid-90s (when the The Conscious Mind was published) that offer any further guidance as to which is most likely correct.
"On the other hand, it is clear by now that all interpretations of quantum mechanics are to some extent crazy. That is the fundamental paradox of quantum mechanics. The three leading candidates for interpretation are perhaps Wigner's interpretation on which consciousness brings about collapse, Bohm's nonlocal hidden variables interpretation, and the Everett interpretation. Of these, Wigner's interpretation implies that macroscopic objects are often in superpositions, until a casual look from an observer causes them to collapse. Bohm's view implies that the trajectory of every particle in the universe depends on the state of every other. And the Everett view implies that there is much more in the world than we ever would have thought.
"Of these, perhaps Bohm's view is the least crazy and Everett's the most, with Wigner's in between. Ranked in order of theoretical virtue, on the other hand, the sequence is reversed. Bohm's view is unsatisfying due to its complex, jury-rigged nature. Wigner's view is quite elegant, with its two basic dynamical laws mirroring the quantum-mechanical calculus, if all the details can be worked out. But Everett's view is by far the simplest. It postulates only the Schrödinger equation, the principle that is accepted by all interpretations of quantum mechanics. It also has the virtues of being an entirely local theory, and of being straightforwardly compatible with relativity theory, virtues that the other interpretations lack."
Anyway, off to begin reading the compilation of replies to Chalmers' book in Jonathan Shear's Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem!
Oh, he doesn't hide the fact that he's advocating a form of dualism, though he believes it arises naturally due to fundamental laws (hence the naturalism part) but is not logically supervenient over the physical. That is, he thinks we can imagine a philosophical zombie (someone who has the same physical properties as us but has no conscious experience, and that this is not logically impossible, even though it is impossible in nature--I think, on the other hand, that this notion is entirely incoherent and indeed logically impossible). He also calls himself a nonreductive functionalist.
Alex, regarding some of my earlier speculations, the ideas I suggested came to me by way of my favorite psychonaut Robert Anton Wilson in the philosophical-pseudoscientific work Quantum Psychology. He goes through a list of various philosophies and captures the notions I was trying to express as follows:
"Ethnomethodology, largely the creation of Dr. Charles Garfinkle, combines the most radical theories of modern anthropology and phenomenological sociology. Recognizing social realities (plural), which it calls emic realities, enthnomethodology shows how every human perception, including the perceptions of social scientists who think they can study society "objectively," always contains the limits, the defects and unconscious prejudices of the emic reality (or social game) of the observer.
"Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists sometimes acknowledge an etic reality which is like unto the old-fashioned "objective reality" of traditional (pre-existentalist) philosophy and the ancient superstitions which have by now become "common sense". However, they point out that we cannot say anything meaningful about etic reality, because anything we can say has the structure of our emic reality---our social game rules (especially our language game)---built into it.
"If you wish to deny this, please send me a complete description of etic reality, without using words, mathematics, music or other forms of human symbolism. (Send it express. I have wanted to see it for decades)."
At the conclusion of the Chalmers' book, he briefly delves into a few of the different popular theories of quantum mechanics and summarizes them as follows. I'd like your opinion if this is still the situation we find ourselves in today or if any significant advances have been made since the mid-90s (when the The Conscious Mind was published) that offer any further guidance as to which is most likely correct.
"On the other hand, it is clear by now that all interpretations of quantum mechanics are to some extent crazy. That is the fundamental paradox of quantum mechanics. The three leading candidates for interpretation are perhaps Wigner's interpretation on which consciousness brings about collapse, Bohm's nonlocal hidden variables interpretation, and the Everett interpretation. Of these, Wigner's interpretation implies that macroscopic objects are often in superpositions, until a casual look from an observer causes them to collapse. Bohm's view implies that the trajectory of every particle in the universe depends on the state of every other. And the Everett view implies that there is much more in the world than we ever would have thought.
"Of these, perhaps Bohm's view is the least crazy and Everett's the most, with Wigner's in between. Ranked in order of theoretical virtue, on the other hand, the sequence is reversed. Bohm's view is unsatisfying due to its complex, jury-rigged nature. Wigner's view is quite elegant, with its two basic dynamical laws mirroring the quantum-mechanical calculus, if all the details can be worked out. But Everett's view is by far the simplest. It postulates only the Schrödinger equation, the principle that is accepted by all interpretations of quantum mechanics. It also has the virtues of being an entirely local theory, and of being straightforwardly compatible with relativity theory, virtues that the other interpretations lack."
Anyway, off to begin reading the compilation of replies to Chalmers' book in Jonathan Shear's Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem!
(March 29, 2014 at 8:48 pm)Chas Wrote: "Naturalistic dualism" is either a poorly chosen term for a reasonable idea, a name for an incoherent idea, or a contradiction.
And "psychophysical"? That leads me to believe he really means dualism, and he's riding the woo-woo train.
Oh, he doesn't hide the fact that he's advocating a form of dualism, though he believes it arises naturally due to fundamental laws (hence the naturalism part) but is not logically supervenient over the physical. That is, he thinks we can imagine a philosophical zombie (someone who has the same physical properties as us but has no conscious experience, and that this is not logically impossible, even though it is impossible in nature--I think, on the other hand, that this notion is entirely incoherent and indeed logically impossible). He also calls himself a nonreductive functionalist.
